Straight dope: Athletes and drugs at the Olympic Games

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At first, they look merely suspicious, those amazing feats of athletic ability and grandeur.

A swimmer who placed 90th in a world championship one year wins an Olympic gold medal the next.

A track and field champion, once lithe and lean, bulks up over the space of a few months.

Doping, the act of using artificial performance or strength-enhancing drugs to outperform an opponent in a sport, is rampant in amateur sport, standing beside politics and discrimination as the source of biggest distractions and biggest stains on the Olympics.

Then there are the accidental influences that tar an athlete’s big win. Victoria rower Silken Laumann, a heroine of the 1992 Olympics, was stripped of one gold medal at the 1995 Pan Am Games after testing positive for the banned stimulant pseudoephedrine, an ingredient in the Benadryl decongestant she took to treat her cold.

Whistler snowboarder Ross Rebagliati’s second-hand waft of marijuana that mysteriously entered his bloodstream, slowing him down to win the gold in Nagano in 1992.

Even mere accusations tend to stick long after athletes are cleared. Rampant doping in the Tour de France attached itself like a stubborn burr to cycling star Lance Armstrong, although he’s never tested positive for any banned substance.

Considering the pressure that athletes face to win at all costs, the temptation to cheat is strong, says UBC assistant professor of Kinetics Jim Rupert.

“I can’t think of any other profession where there’s this huge gap between being the very best and being almost the very best.

“You can be the fourth fastest in the world in track and field, but nobody cares.”

Vanoc anti-doping director Jeremy Luke said controls have gradually been tightened since the creation of the World Anti-Doping Agency in 1999. And this year, Vanoc’s betting the Games will be the cleanest ever, he insisted.

Nearly 200 trained testers will collect 2,450 urine and blood samples during the course of the 2010 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games. That’s double the number collected at the 2006 Winter Games in Torino, Italy.

Many eyes follow the testing process, including those of the doping control officer, the IOC medical commission observer, a World Anti-Doping Association observer and the athlete’s own representative.

Vanoc will partner with L’Institut national de la recherche scientifique — Institut Armand-Frappier (INRS-Institut Armand-Frappier) to operate an on-site laboratory during the Games.

Drug testing is no easy job.

Officials must take care not to touch vials or containers. They’re required to pop in on an athlete any time of the day or night, and stick with them until the deed is done, since the Richmond-based laboratories run 24 hours a day during the Games.

Timing is crucial. Directly after competition, athletes aren’t likely to offer a sampling, as they’re usually dehydrated. Over-hydration leads to diluted, unusable samples.

Athletes are ordered to raise their shirts to their chests, drop their pants and make a 360-degree turn in front of an examiner, and then urinate in a test cup.

They’re then instructed to open their kits, divide their samples between two bottles and seal and box the bottles before undergoing blood tests.

Samples are then placed in a locked cabinet and transported to a Richmond laboratory for a 24-hour turnaround time from lab to test results.

And the paycheque? Nil. Every tester is a volunteer.

Rupert said he has all the respect in the world for experienced doping control officers. “They have an intuitive sense about them. They know exactly what they’re looking for.”

As for the athletes, Rupert says many of the drugs they take to mask the detection of banned drugs are as detrimental — or more harmful — to their health than the original drugs used to boost competitive performance. And that’s significant.

Anabolic steroids like testosterone and androstenedione may build muscle and bone, but lead to breast development in men, acne, liver damage and stunted growth.

Used to enhance the transfer of oxygen, recombinant erythropoietin, or EPO, can lead to heart attacks, strokes and blood clots.

Rupert’s research focuses on genetic manipulation, which augments the body’s production of EPO, a naturally occurring hormone involved in producing blood cells.

Used medically to treat anemia, synthetic EPO already ranks among the most commonly abused doping agents in endurance sports. Athletes have been known to take the synthetic version of the hormone via injection. Each shot increases the blood’s capacity to carry oxygen, thereby enhancing aerobic performance.

Rupert says he’s heard some strong ethical arguments in favour of either legalizing doping or relaxing the prohibition on many substances.

“The World Anti-Doping Association has a no-prisoners rule — that no matter what it is, whatever is in your body is your responsibility. And if it’s in there accidentally, it’s judged the same as if you took it deliberately.”

Many argue in favour of tailoring the tests individually, or relaxing restrictions on performance enabling drugs, he says, “which could make an athlete as good as he or she can be — where a performance-enhancing drug make the athlete better than he is.”

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Straight dope: Athletes and drugs at the Olympic Games

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